Wrong Tilt on China Trade Imbalance

Touting the benefits California receives from trade with China (“The Upside of U.S. Trade With China,” May 1) without factoring in all the jobs that this state lost in the process is like bragging about the amount of oil not spilled by the Exxon Valdez.

For 25 years we’ve been hearing business and trade officials promise that the trade imbalance will even out once we help the Chinese understand how free enterprise works. I think they know how it works -- they just don’t want it.

And while I’m glad that California can sell a few soybeans and some microchips to the Chinese, as long as they continue to sell us eight times the amount of goods that we sell them, I reserve the right to see a downside in the trade imbalance.

Stan Brothers

Glendale

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The article mentions the modest improvement in American exports to China, up to $34.7 billion in 2004, and it does contrast the “U.S. trade deficit with China [which] soared to $162 billion last year,” but it misleads readers by stating that “nearly half of [China’s export-oriented factories] are owned by American and other foreign companies.”

If a factory is owned in China, it is only half-owned. The totalitarian government makes sure it gets control, a practice not uncommon in many foreign countries.

China has a couple of other interesting policies: To build a factory, you must submit full drawings, including, for example, process and instrumentation diagrams, which are considered highly proprietary anywhere else. It should be of little surprise that it is common for a second factory to be built right down the river, a mirror of the “foreign-owned” enterprise, but this one wholly owned by the Chinese.

The article does suggest that the boats will be eventually be filled in both directions, but that’s not until America has deeply descended into Third World-nation status.

Jim Wheeler

Winston-Salem, N.C.